Leaders of Ventura County’s drug and alcohol prevention program should consider spending more on opioid abuse prevention and less on drug treatment services, according to a Ventura County Grand Jury report.
The grand jury cited the $7.1 million budgeted for narcotics treatment and the $2.4 million budgeted for prevention services in the drug and alcohol program administered by the Ventura County Behavioral Health Department. Calling the funding disproportionate, the grand jury recommended that agency officials consider reworking the mix.
“Prevention program efforts primarily focus on marijuana and alcohol abuse with minimal attention to opioid abuse,” said the report from the 19-member civil panel that investigates a wide range of government issues.
More about the opioid problem:
Loretta Denering, new chief of the behavioral health agency’s Drug and Alcohol Programs Division, declined to comment on the report. She said the Ventura County Health Care Agency, which includes behavioral health, would submit a formal response to the grand jury within 90 days.
In April, behavioral health leaders, the county chief medical examiner and others told the Ventura County Board of Supervisors that deaths involving opioids in Ventura County climbed from 55 in 2016 to 92 last year. In its report, the grand jury cited earlier medical examiner data that suggested 63 percent of the county’s overdose deaths from 2008 to 2014 involved prescription drugs.
The magnitude of an opioid abuse crisis that reaches across the nation prompted the grand jury to look at local aspects, said Foreman Andrew Ludlum.
“It’s certainly a topic in almost any city and county,” he said. “Everyone’s talking about it.”
Not only do the county’s opioid-related services focus largely on treatment but those programs also rely heavily on services delivered by for-profit contractors, the grand jury said.
The county should consider whether more cost-effective treatment could be provided by nonprofits or by county staff, the grand jury said.
The prevention programs that exist should include more on the dangers of opioid abuse, the grand jury said, also calling for more consistency in calculating opioid death numbers.
After reporting the climb in opioid deaths last month, Ventura County Chief Medical Examiner Chris Young said he limited his data to 2016 and 2017 because of possible differences in the way overdose fatalities were calculated in the past. He said many overdoses involve not just opioids but multiple drugs.
In the report to county supervisors, behavioral health officials detailed efforts in responding to the opioid crisis, include working to reduce the availability of prescription opioids. They cited efforts to register more than 70 percent of the doctors and other providers in the county to use the statewide CURES 2.0 database that can help identify abusers who collect the same drugs from more than one source.
They also cited efforts to expand the distribution of naloxone, a drug that can reverse the effects of opioid overdose.
Ludlum said the grand jury report didn’t delve into any specific treatment or prevention effort but took more of a broad look at how funding and other resources were used.
May 1, 2018
Ventura County Star
By Tom Kisken
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